Why the Twitter CEO Brought a Culty Menswear Account Back to Life

Over the past month, diehard menswear fans may have noticed a gaping hole in their Twitter timelines: gone were the shitposting, menswear memes, and layered long-running jokes rendered in near-indecipherable Fuccboi-ese. The cause of this absence was the suspension of the beloved account belonging to once-upon-a-time blog Four Pins, likely the first account to eclipse 200,000 followers by constantly posting tweets like, “when u spy a fellow jawnz enthusiast” or “when ur most swagless homie cops ur grail.” Even the account’s founder Lawrence Schlossman (formerly founder of Four Pins, now brand director at Grailed) thought that @Four_Pins was finished. And then, all of a sudden, it wasn’t: on Friday, the account returned to life. All it took was a determined raw denim retailer, six phone calls, three emails, and the Twitter founder’s love of menswear.

But first, let’s backtrack: the Four Pins account was suspended around a month ago after photographers complained that their photos of some of the account’s darlings—Jonah Hill, John Mayer, Shia LaBeouf—were posted without permission. Four Pins received and refused to comply with several DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown notices, and eventually Twitter finally took the account down. At that point, Four Pins’ outlook was grim. Schlossman made his peace and said last rites. “Everyone kept telling me I had to go through all these official channels (counter-claims, maybe get a lawyer, give out my private information, etc) which didn't seem worth it to me,” he tells me over email.

Babzani, it turns out, happens to be friends with the very jawnz enthusiast with the power to resuscitate the Four Pins account: Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey. He says that he’s been friends with Dorsey for 13 years now, and took it upon himself to get Four Pins back on the timeline. Dorsey, perhaps alone among his Allbirds-wearing Silicon Valley brethren, was ready to listen. He is, after all, one of us—a nose-ringed menswear nerd known to wear head-to-toe Rick Owens outfits. (Or in Four Pins parlance, ‘fits/fire jawnz/RO drip.)

According to an email Babzani wrote Schlossman, it took six phone calls with Dorsey and three emails to convince the founder that Four Pins was worth saving. (We reached out to Twitter when the news broke Friday and did not immediately hear back.) The calls concerned—of course—Rick Owens, but also “how important of a voice that account was to the fashion industry that we're in,” Babzani writes over email. (Where, oh, where else can someone on Twitter engage in Jonah Hill fitwatch 2k19?)

It might seem funny that Four Pins can inspire such passion—that, aware of all Twitter’s legion issues, Babzani decided to crusade for this particular cause. For many guys, though, Four Pins was the blog-turned-Twitter that helped make menswear more approachable by turning it into one massive joke—the sort you wanted to be in on. "With Four Pins you have a voice which pokes fun at the seriousness of fashion and streetwear," Babzani says when I ask him why the account's important to him. "It's good to be reminded that they're just clothes, and that nothing should be taken as seriously as how the press writes about fashion most of the time. It was important to try to work on unlocking their account as it would have been a sad thing to lose that voice in our scene." Some of this must have gotten through to Dorsey. “He said he's going to work on it, and bam, the account is back,” Babzani says.

Babzani tells me he’s already heard from guys who want to know why he didn’t leverage his relationship with Dorsey into, say, getting Nazis banned, instead. Twitter has been resistant to that plea, and resuscitating @Four_Pins happened to be the item within Babzani’s power. And now, when you see a tweet calling out swagless homies, praising Hill’s latest look, or initiating fit battles, you’ll have Dorsey’s love of raw denim to thank.